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A chemical weapon agent (CWA), or chemical warfare agent, is a chemical substance whose toxic properties are meant to kill, injure or incapacitate human beings.About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled as chemical weapon agents during the 20th century, although the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has an online database listing 35,942 chemicals which ...
The chemical used in warfare is called a chemical warfare agent (CWA). About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled as chemical warfare agents during the 20th and 21st centuries. These agents may be in liquid, gas or solid form. Liquid agents that evaporate quickly are said to be volatile or have a high vapor pressure.
During the interwar period, chemical agents were occasionally used to subdue populations and suppress rebellion. In 1925, 16 of the world's major nations signed the Geneva Protocol, thereby pledging never to use chemical weapons in interstate warfare again.
Chemical warfare does not depend upon explosive force to achieve an objective. It depends upon the unique properties of the chemical agent weaponized. A British gas bomb that was used during World War I. A lethal agent is designed to injure, incapacitate, or kill an opposing force, or deny unhindered use of a particular area of terrain.
Thousands of American soldiers were exposed to chemical warfare agents during Cold War testing programs (see Edgewood Arsenal human experiments), as well as in accidents. In 1968, one such accident killed approximately 6,400 sheep when an agent drifted out of Dugway Proving Ground during a test. [9]
Chemical weapons have been used in at least a dozen wars since the end of the First World War; [62] they were not used in combat on a large scale until Iraq used mustard gas and the more deadly nerve agents in the Halabja chemical attack near the end of the eight-year Iran–Iraq War. The full conflict's use of such weaponry killed around ...
A common chemical used for explosives was discovered by the FBI in a Texas storage locker linked to Bourbon Street terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who the agency has identified as the person who ...
Schedule 1 substances, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention, are chemicals which are feasible either to be used directly as chemical weapons or in the manufacture of chemical weapons, and which have very limited to no use outside of chemical warfare. These may be produced or used for research, medical, pharmaceutical or chemical ...